EUROPEAN COMMISSION AND THE CIVIL SOCIETY – IS THE DIALOGUE POSSIBLE?

On the 10-11^th of July in Kiev the international conference "European Commission and civil society: acquired experience and new opportunities for Ukraine" took place. The conference was organized by the European Commission's Delegation to Ukraine with the aim of strengthening the role of civil society in general context of Ukraine-EU relations and in the framework of introducing European Commission Assistance Programs. TORO President Oleksiy Khmara represented Kirovohrad region at the event.

Jan Boug, Head of the European Commission's Delegation to Ukraine, underlined the importance of involving organizations of civil society into dialogue by the European Commission and declared the intention to enhance communication with CSO, including regional ones. One of the tasks of the conference according to him was the desire to inform Ukrainian public organizations on the available programs and cooperation opportunities with the EC.

In her turn, Helga Pender, project coordinator of the European Commission's Delegation to Ukraine, underlined in her report that according to the EC strategies "civil society participation is extremely important for the general success of the European society policy". She also told about the field approach in Ukraine, introduced by the European Commission in conformance with the Paris Declaration. This approach presupposes giving money to governmental structures in compliance with the defined priorities.

One of the most important issues of interest became the question on how the civil society can participate in the creation and realization of field programs under the condition of the absence of institutionalized cooperation mechanisms.

As a summary, unconformity can be observed between declaring by the EC its interest to strengthen cooperation with CSO, including regional ones, and the shortage of programs, opened for participation of CSO and the lack of mechanisms for their participation in the field governmental programs, financed by the EC.

Despite such unconformities, the active participation of European Commission's Delegation representatives in working groups, declaring their intention to give more documentation on the site of EC in Ukrainian language and to interact more actively with the CSO arouses optimism.

The organizers promised to publish materials of the conference on the web-page of the EC

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